How Technology influences Art - a Professorship at the Faculty of Arts Zuyd Univeristy

Technology Driven Art is a new (°2014) professorship by Peter Missotten at the Faculty of Arts (Zuyd University), dealing with the influence of technology on the evolution of the Arts. Technology Driven Art organises practice based, artistic research projects across all the Art departments, involving the Arts students of Zuyd University.Technology Driven Art works in close collaboration with the artistic research centre Autonomy and the Public Sphere in the Arts by Ruth Benschop at the Faculty of Arts (Zuyd University).

On Monday October 9th, the winners of the thesis prize 2016/2017 TDA/AOK were announced during a lively workshop-event at the Arts Faculty Maastricht.

This year, four thesis prizes of the Faculty of the Arts, Zuyd, year 2016-2017 are awarded to (in no particularorder):– Aurélie d’Incau – Play and Social Change, A comparison of the notion ‘Play’ in art movements of the1960s and 21st century culture and its impact on social change– Hean Kim – The fundamental common ground between all living beings – < FAMILY >– Skye Young – What’s the Buzz with Honey Bees? Illustrating beekeeper management– Jessica den Hartog – Recolored, a new way of recycling

The thesis prize is founded by the two research centres of the Faculty of Arts (Zuyd Hogeschool) to encourage students to make theses (and/or documentations of artistic processes) that do justice to their own artistic practice. Too often, reflection within arts education falls back on semi scientific ideals of validity and objectivity. This removes critical reflexivity from artistic practice. The research centres TDA and AOK support theses, documentations, reflection and research within arts education that are relevant to artistic practice.

Running project are:tda-3Dscanning.orga research into the possibilities of 3D scanning in live performance shows by woody Laurenswith 'Untergang | Titanic', a collaboration of some 10 foreign theatre students of 7 different with the support of PLETA.eu

tda-3Dprinting.orga research into the influence of 3Dprinting in design by eric Steenman

Storytelling in data visualisation by Rob Delsing in close collaboration with Kay Schröder

Titanic / Untergang is an international collaboration between PLETA.eu (a platform of European Theatre Academies) and the professorship on Technology Driven Art. 8 students of seven different countries joined forces to investigate the use of technology in a live performance. As a challenge, Woody Laurens and Peter Missotten - the research coaches for this project - haven chosen the old gasometer of Maastricht as their platform. A huge space, 50 meter in diameter and some 13 meter high, with an echo time of 13 seconds. How to transform this space into a panoramic setting for the sinking of the Titanic, in reverse? The answer is cables: lots of cables and some 15 video projectors, all of them controlled wirelessly. The participating students created media installations in which they improvised performances around the theme of the sinking of the Titanic. Alongside, they worked with 3D scanning techniques to get full body scans, using the affordable Structure 3D sensors. The quirks of the technique delivered fascinating wireframe models they integrated in the performance. Next stop was Bierbeek (B) where they shot loads of underwater movies in a lifesize watertank. Combine this with a golden, inflatable Titanic of their own making and a shabby, plastic iceberg, and you got yourselves a fascinating performance in a 360° panoramic setting. A bloody hot setting it was (due to the weather), sometimes resulting in a few projectors refusing to start up and a wobbly melting iceberg. That didn’t stop the students to perform in a hightech evocation of the sinking of the Titanic. Backwards.

OPEN CALL FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTSFOR (ARTISTIC) RESEARCH PROJECTSThe research centre of the Faculty of the Arts offers lecturers, teachers and students... time to work on (artistic) research projects. For the first time, for the coming year, teachers and/or students can submit their own proposal for a research project. They can do this jointly or individually. The proposals can be connected to existing courses and should preferably be executed together with students, but they can also be more detached from existing curricula. They can also be executed with external partners. The proposals should always be related to the program lines of the Technology Driven Art research centre. It is primarily interested in the question how new technology provides cause for new artistic practices. To get a more precise idea of the domains of interest of this research centre, you can browse through the 'Lectoraatsplan' section of this site - unfortunately, Dutch only for the time being...If you have an idea – articulate or still somewhat vague – for a research proposal within the boundaries of the research subject (Art and Technology), please contact us any time.For more information or a friendly chat... please contact Peter Missotten, using this contact form.

DER GOLEM - A VIDEO LIBRETTO BY PETER MISSOTTEN FOR AN OPERA BY BERNARD LANG 2014-16What if the libretto for an opera wouldn't be a scripted play, but a silent movie? How - if at all - would that change the concept of an opera?In this project, Peter Missotten created an enigmatic silent movie, loosely based on the book of Gustav Meyerinck 'Der Golem'. It was the basis for the new opera by Bernard Lang, which was staged by Peter Missotten into a high (and low) tech opera for the Opera of Mannheim in 2016. Unexpectedly, it turned out that the video-libretto didn't have so much of an influence on the storyline of the opera, but had a big impact on it's structure and the music itself….This opera and video libretto is the basis of a practice based REsearch into the influence of a video based libretto in an opera.